The Museum Turns 11 Years Old, Part 1: Site Summary and Statistics

For 11 years now I've been writing posts, telling the story of breweries and their taps. Last year was another difficult year as I had to manage my best friend Kelly's estate, and I suffered quite a bit from his loss (and the loss of my other best friend, Chet), as well as dealing with the aftermath of contracting Covid. When all of this combined with some serious work stress, it caused me to have some cognitive issues. I'm not trying to make excuses, it just is what is. According to the CDC, "cognitive impairment is when a person has trouble remembering, learning new things, concentrating, or making decisions that affect their everyday life, and can range from mild to severe." You can see how under those conditions it would be tough to regularly write tap profiles. There was a 4 month period between August and December where, in that state of mind, I couldn't write anything. Major, life-changing events also forced me to really think about what was important to me, and how I want to live the rest of my life. Collecting tap handles and writing about them are a fun hobby, but if it ever starts feeling like a burden, I will pull the plug because I refuse to carry that weight.

Okay, enough of that. This past month I made great progress and seemed to fall into a good rhythm. With cognitive issues, work stress, and the estate all behind me now, I'm looking forward to a more productive year in 2023. It would have been a very bad year without the late push I made in February and March. The 7 taps profiled in this period were almost half the total for the entire year. 15 profiles isn't ideal, but there's no use in dwelling on that. Here's to hoping I'll make some progress this year in profiles written, since only about half of the collection is on the site. Allow that to sink in for a moment...think about all of the content on this site, and that's only half of what it could be. Isn't that mind-blowing?

The number of new breweries/brewpubs/restaurants profiled this year was actually pretty close to the results over the past several years, at 10 profiles written.

When it comes to new purchases, I actually purchased 5 more taps this year than I did last year, right at 5 per month. As I stated last year, it's harder and harder to find taps I don't have. It does seem like supply chain issues have improved, and I'd say several taps I acquired were new taps released in 2022. I also picked up some great taps that will go into my "Top Taps Acquired" this year. In fact it was kind of tough not to take the list to 20, instead of the 15 I presented last year. I focused on the most scarce taps, combined with the ones I find most appealing, to keep it at 15.

Finally the page views...this page view number is taken from March 21st, so it includes an extra 4 months over previous periods. In a few more years I could get to 1 million page views, which would be pretty epic. So thanks once again to everyone who comes to visit the Museum!

I'm going to change things up a little this year. Instead of presenting individual tap statistics, I'm going to do something different. I'll have that up by the end of the week, so stay tuned...